Wales and West Housing, the scandal continues

In the previous post ‘Sister Sledge’ and I tried, in our different ways, to explain the Labour Party’s links with various other bodies, from Spartist rent-a-mob-with-whistles outfits to superficially respectable social housing bodies.

Ultimately, such linkages combine to create a system not unlike those we see in one-party states, where the reach of the ruling party extends into every area of national life. Such contempt for plurality ignores the fact that Labour gets just a third of the votes in Assembly elections and it leads, as in true dictatorships, to over-confidence and even corruption.

Which might explain what I’m now going to tell you. Though if someone can satisfactorily prove to me that it’s nothing more than a genuine mistake then I shall make that clear in a subsequent post.

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PLAS MOROLWG

To give you the fullest understanding of the subject I think some background information would be helpful.

Plas Morolwg was a general needs family scheme owned by Bromford Carinthia, an English housing association, and built in the late 1970s. You have to wonder who gave planning permission for an English outfit to ship in dozens of people many of whom would have had special needs, with each one adding to the burden on the local health and other services.

But the importation of England’s problems still goes on, the difference today is that it’s done by ‘Welsh’ organisations using Welsh public money! Yet I have heard of no residential homes or social housing developments in England catering for Welsh people and paid for from English funds. Isn’t that strange?

Tai Cantref, based in Newcastle Emlyn, was pressured into buying Plas Morolwg by Tai Cymru, the former umbrella organisation for registered social landlords, now superseded by Community Housing Cymru. It was not a good buy.

To begin with, Plas Morolwg stood in an exposed location above the harbour/marina in Aberystwyth. It’s a nice spot when the sun’s out but otherwise at the mercy of the weather coming in off Cardigan Bay. Enough of a problem in itself, but Plas Morolwg was not very well built either, and a storm in February 2014 exposed just how bad a job the builders had done.

Almost before the wind had died down Tai Cantref slapped in a planning application on 11 February 2014 to demolish Plas Morolwg and replace it with a “mixed affordable and open market residential re-development”. (Ref No A140117.)

From @alanhalephoto, click to enlarge

As you’ve seen in the link supplied above, Outline Planning Permission was granted 7 October 2014 and Plas Morolwg was demolished in January 2015.

But more storm clouds were gathering. For some bad business decisions by Tai Cantref encouraged Bay Bubble scheming that saw this housing association brought to its knees and handed over to the Labour Party’s favourite RSL, Wales and West Housing.

This arranged marriage was formalised in September 2016. Which meant of course that Wales and West came into full possession of the now-cleared and ready-to-build-on Plas Morolwg site.

In addition to the Tai Cantref planning application to demolish and rebuild Plas Morolwg Wales and West has submitted a further application – Ref No A170922 – for a further eight “residential apartments”. (Are there non-residential apartments?)

This presumably is in addition to the Tai Cantref application of February 2014 for 64 apartments. The original Plas Morolwg complex was just 44 apartments, but the new building is two storeys higher and many believe it’s an even bigger eyesore than the original.

One thing’s for sure, the biddies on the top floor are in for exciting times when 90mph westerlies blow in from Labrador.

The next development in this saga was Ceredigion council announcing that the Bodlondeb extra care facility in Aberystwyth faced closure. This news was exploited by the Labour Party and its formed-for-the-purpose front organisation the Ceredigion People’s Assembly. (Not to be confused with the People’s Assembly of Ceredigion, or the Popular Assembly of Ceredigion.)

So a Labour-led campaign against Ceredigion’s non-Labour council eventually drove the council into the arms of the Labour-run Wales and West Housing, which may now be in a position to demand whatever it wants on the Plas Morolwg site.

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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

I have been helped with this section by someone who has signed up to the new party, someone with connections in Ceredigion Council and Cantref, and this individual has some very interesting information about the Council’s final quarter Social Housing Grant programme bid to the ‘Welsh’ Government.

Submitted by Keith Davies, on 16th February 2018, I am informed that the bid spreadsheet includes the following statement: “We have included a drawdown request for the Plas Morolwg extra care scheme acquisition stage totalling £1,690,000 . . . ”

The spreadsheet shows £1,051,000 being claimed for site acquisition of Plas Morolwg in the 2017/18 Social Housing Grant development programme; with an extra £188,500 claimed from any spare moolah available in 2017/18 surplus grant round to top up the “remaining acquisition grant only”.

This seems to suggest that Wales and West is to be paid Social Housing Grant to buy a development site that they acquired when the ‘Welsh’ Government encouraged them to take over Tai Cantref. In other words, a site they already own!

But just to be sure, I went to the Land Registry website. From there I downloaded both the title and the map of the site. There seems to be little question that Wales and West owns the Plas Morolwg site and with no money owing to banks or other lenders.

But then I got to thinking, ‘Well, hang on, maybe Wales and West is buying some extra land, and that explains this “acquisition stage” payment?’ So I went to the plan on the Ceredigion Council website, the plan relating to the proposed redevelopment of the site, and compared it with the Land Registry map.

click to enlarge

They’re identical. As you can see for yourself.

The proposed development moves down the hill to minimise the impact of the two extra storeys and this will almost certainly mean that access, parking and just about everything else will be located at the rear of the building.

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‘THE WILD WEST SHOW’

In the days when Ceredigion council was run by men of property, planning permission was so easy to come by, and planning rules treated with such contempt, that Paul Flynn, the veteran Newport West MP, described Ceredigion council as “the Wild West Show”.

Those days of greedy landowners enriching themselves may be gone, but a new menace to open and honest local government in Ceredigion has emerged in the form of Momentum, whose followers act as foot-soldiers for a locally unelectable Labour Party and its linked organisations.

Juvenile leftists with nothing better to do are one thing, but with Wales and West Housing we are dealing with a ruthless – possibly corrupt – organisation bent on hoovering up rivals thanks to funding and political support provided by its parent body, ‘Welsh’ Labour.

So we need answers to the following questions, and these answers must come from Wales and West itself, Cyngor Ceredigion, and the ‘Welsh’ Labour Government.

First, has the Plas Morolwg development received full planning approval? Then, given the history of the site, where will the residents come from?

But perhaps most important of all – is Wales and West Housing receiving £1.69m to buy a site it already owns? If so, why? And who authorised this funding?

The time has come for opposition politicians in the Assembly to demand an investigation into social housing in Wales; we must know exactly how it’s funded, whether it meets – even exceeds – the needs of Wales, and the relationship between some housing associations – particularly Wales and West Housing – and ‘Welsh’ Labour.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE 01.03.2018: Someone sent me a ‘Welsh’ Government document called a (social housing) Programme Delivery Plan for Ceredigion. I’m not sure how readable it is, but anyway, here’s the link.

The first page lists a number of projects in the pipeline, including Plas Morolwg, but with some information redacted. The other project with information redacted is Mid Wales Housing’s Cylch Caron in Tregaron, which I understand has been scuppered by Cyngor Ceredigion getting into bed with Wales and West up on the windy heights of Plas Morolwg.

Note also on this first page that under the ‘Tenure’ heading all the other projects are listed as ‘Social’, but not Plas Morolwg, which is ‘Neutral’. This I’m told means that it will either be private housing or mixed.

And yet, as I’ve explained in the main post, Wales and West is asking for Social Housing Grant to acquire the Plas Morolwg site. Yet we know a) Wales and West already owns the site and b) the Programme Delivery Plan now tells us W&W will not be building social housing.

So what the hell is going on here?

Scroll down to the third sheet (which I suspect is a continuation of the first) and you’ll find other Wales and West projects with information redacted. In fact, there are five redactions for Wales and West, the two for Mid Wales Housing, but none for Tai Ceredigion which has the most entries on these sheets.

So why does Wales and West Housing get such preferential treatment from the ‘Welsh’ Government? I can understand the reasoning behind commercial confidentially, but when it’s only applied to Wales and West it looks very much like favouritism. Or maybe hiding something?

P.S. I’ve also seen the Pembrokeshire Programme Delivery Plan, and there Wales and West has even more redactions. They may be connected with a development called Parrog Yard in Newport. Any information will be gratefully received and treated confidentially.

91 thoughts on “Wales and West Housing, the scandal continues”

Can anyone explain why no AMs are raising these issues in the Senedd? If this information is in the public domain why is the Auditor General in Wales not undertaking an investigation. Has anyone invited the Ombudsman to investigate this information.

If we are talking about it is in the public domain. If civil servants and officials are facilitating the transfer of funds and recording it in public documents it is subject to investigation.I struggle to believe all AMs are complicit with the ways housing associations and the Welsh Government operate.

I do despair that the mass media are so disinterested in investigating and reporting.

Even if such a transaction hasn’t been officially announced it may already be a matter of record within the Government’s planned allocations & payments systems. Accordingly this item should have been picked up by an internal audit officer early on, not 5 years after the event when some little shit thinks he can get away with “ooh, that must have happened under the last regime”.
Simple checks and balances suffice – questions like “has this property ever appeared on our capex plans previously”, “who signed it off”, and “who’s signing off this additional spend ?” Now it’s highly possible that they are all in on this little scam, just like they were when they gifted parcels of land at knock down prices to a well known developer and tried to pass the blame onto him for accepting the deal !! Bet the lunches were very nice.

I agree with you Paul. The mass media here in Wales are part of the problem instead of doing their job. Trinity Press (Western Mail) is a Labour rag as far as I am concerned, only fit for stuffing the Guy Fawkes or when we run out of toilet paper. The BBC used to produce the odd good bit of investigative journalism, Week In, Week Out for example. Then Phil Parry left them and it went tits up (that’s a joke by the way). The trouble is that so many political journos rely on the scraps fed them by those who wield the power and since that is always the Labour Party here it’s like the closing scene of Animal Farm – you can’t tell the pigs from the men (or the good guys from the bad) they’ve been dining together for so long. It shouldn’t be left to bloggers like Jac all the time and even when he does set a hare running, they clearly do not want to join the chase, preferring to stay in the safe, closeted political bubble that common folk now despise. All the buggers are part of the same club as far as I’m concerned.

Which brings me to another point you made – “I struggle to believe all AMs are complicit with the ways housing associations and the Welsh Government operate”. Indeed – I’d accept that. But we forget the practice of Omerta that seems to operate across the political spectrum. When it comes to the crunch, too many of them will side with their own, including their political opponents, rather than the plebs like us that put them there. As Jac said about something earlier – a pox on them all.

Has Plas Morolwg received full planning? Seemingly not. The reserved matters under the original outline permission of 2014 have yet to be determined, the further 8 “residential apartments” applied for now being lumped into those reserved matters – rather sneakily IMO. You get yourself outline permission for say three houses on a plot then try and say, “please Mr Planning Officer, I’d like to build another 2 there under reserved matters”. You’d likely be given short shrift and told at the very least, submit a fresh planning application, me old chum.

I agree, the Daily Post, owned by Trinity Mirror who have spent millions compensating the people they hacked, do not provide any challenging journalism. Many articles are re-syndicated. I subscribe to it and use its discounted vouchers because I think it is important to have a daily North Wales newspaper as well as what is on the internet.

I do not agree with every dot and comma that Jac writes but I value deeply that there are people investigating and challenging what is happening in Wales.

It is incomprehensible to me that there is so little opposition, protest and campaigning.

The problem isn’t just syndicated articles, much of what appears in the Western Mail, Daily Post and other ‘papers is just press releases. Worse, these are press releases from the very organisations that these newspapers should be investigating. But then, from newspaper proprietors’ standpoint it’s a cheap way to fill a newspaper, you need very few reporters or journalists.

I stopped buying my local rag when I realised that all they were interested in publishing were stories of a cat stuck up a tree or someone’s chimney catching fire. To find out what is really happening in Wales we tune in to your blog.

I glanced at our Meirionnydd edition of the Cambrian News this morning. It stopped me in my tracks – front page spread showing some local councillor complaining about the state of Barmouth promenade! Apparently some woman had tripped. Yawn.

probably some old English bat too busy looking for faults in what other people were doing and not concentrating on where she put her bloody feet ! Mind, it’s odd that she wasn’t riding around on one of those mobility gambos that seem to be all the fashion these days among people who can’t be asked to walk anywhwere. Giving genuine disabled folk a bad name.

Concern about the decline of Welsh community in W.Australia, well they shouldn’t fuckin’ be there, give it back to the native Abo’s or whatever they call themselves these days. ( among most resourceful peoples on Earth). Yet this Golwg website seldom if ever scribbles about the systematic destruction of Welsh communities in Wales.

I cannot understand why Trinity Mirror have been allowed to own the Western Mail, Evening Post and Daily Post. The company has a virtual monopoly of newspapers in Wales. Can anyone believe Labour wouldn’t cry foul if it was News Corporation or the Daily Mail group instead.

I haven’t worked out the whole picture yet Treforus, but here’s a few things for everyone to ponder on:

Trinity Mirror was previously known as the Mirror Group plc.

After Robert Maxwell went overboard, David Montgomery became the Chairman of the Mirror Group. Montgomery had previously been one of Murdoch’s most senior executives. Montgomery was appointed by Murdoch to a very senior role in 1987 after Montgomery had been editor of the News of the Word.

Montgomery’s promotion by Murdoch came in the immediate aftermath of Jeffrey Archer suing the Daily Star for libel after they printed allegations that he had slept with a prostitute called Monica Coghlan. The News of the World while Montgomery was editor published a story claiming that Archer had met Monica and paid her money to go abroad but they didn’t actually say that he had sex with Monica.

By the time the libel case came to court, Montgomery had been promoted by Murdoch. Montgomery then admitted libelling Archer ‘by implication’ – although he didn’t need to do this, because the NoW did not claim that Archer had sex with Monica.

So Montgomery was promoted to high office by Murdoch after publishing a story which landed the company in Court – Murdoch’s lot didn’t even defend a story that they could have defended.

In 2001 Jeffrey Archer was jailed for perjury after it was demonstrated that he had lied in the 1987 trial and that he did have sex with Monica. Monica was killed in a car crash shortly before she was due to give evidence.

When Archer met Monica for sex he was Deputy Chairman of the Tory Party. Thatcher and Murdoch were good mates – she passed the laws that enabled Murdoch to break the print unions and Murdoch did all that he could to ensure that she won elections. The plan worked. Thatcher also really liked Jeffrey Archer, no matter how many lies he told or how many people he cheated.

When Archer stood down as Deputy Chairman, he was replaced by Peter Morrison, the MP for Chester who was a member of the paedophile ring that was abusing children in care in north Wales/Cheshire. Tories from that era have since admitted that it was common knowledge that Morrison was doing this and Thatcher was warned but ignored it.

Murdoch and the rest of the press would not publish anything about Morrison – or the other Westminster folk involved with child abuse – because of their political interests and also because some of the members and owners of the press didn’t have clean hands with regard to sexual impropriety.

There was serious criminal activity in north Wales because of the paedophile ring and a number of children in care and psych patients who were witnesses were found dead. Five witnesses were killed by a firebomb in 1992, days after John Major won the General Election. More witnesses were found dead in the following months.

David Montgomery became Chairman of Mirror Group in 1992. Montgomery is related by marriage to the Lloyd George family, some of whom were closely associated with people who concealed the abuse of children in north Wales. Montgomery is a good mate of Amanda Platell – who was William Hague’s press officer, 1999-01 – just as the Waterhouse Report was published, the massive cover-up into the north Wales child abuse scandal which was orchestrated by Hague when he was Secretary of State for Wales.

The Mirror Group has always been hostile to Wales – the ‘Welsh Mirror’ showed zilch understanding at all of the problems of second homes and property prices being pushed beyond the pockets of people in north Wales and just constructed it as mad ‘Welsh nationalists’ who ran around burning down English peoples houses.

Trinity Mirror owns the Daily Post. Back in 2009 the Betsi Health Board had a CEO, a Chair and a Vice-Chair who tried very hard to challenge the people still working in the NHS in north Wales who facilitated the paedophile ring – there are still a lot of them about. The paedophiles’ friends did all they could to bring those three people down and the Daily Post helped. The Post published stories about the Betsi Three which the Post knew to be untrue and also blamed the Betsi Three for patient harm and deaths which were actually the result of the activities of the paedophiles’ friends when they were running the NHS Trusts that preceded the Betsi. I knew what was going on because I had spent many years trying to raise the alarm about the paedophiles’ friends and their activities and I was threatened and attempts were made to frame me for serious crimes. When Trinity Mirror went to war on the Betsi Three, I was actually told that ‘they won’t win this and when they lose your life won’t be worth living’. I was also approached by an investigative journalist who told me that she wanted to make a documentary about me – the day before filming she tried to get me to make fallacious allegations about a member of the Betsi Three. When I refused filming was scrapped.

The Betsi Three eventually resigned after they received hate mail and non-stop aggro. I know that one of them experienced a house fire – I do not know whether that was suspicious or not, but I do know that there were two attempts to set fire to my house.

The current Chair and Vice Chair of the Betsi are both people who concealed the north Wales/Cheshire paedophile ring. The Board is now in chaos and the NHS in north Wales is frankly dangerous.

Alison Gow was editor of the Daily Post when it threw libellous shite at the Betsi Three. Gow received promotion and is now doing very well for herself. She also admitted to me that Trinity Mirror had a ‘financial arrangement’ with Spire, a private medical company. Waiting lists at the Betsi are now so long that GPs are advising their patients to go private – to Spire. Where the patients pay to see a consultant who is also being paid 100k pa to work for the Betsi…

Jeffrey and Mary Archer have many contacts with people who concealed the north Wales paedophile ring. I won’t bore you with it all here, it is all on my own website if anyone is interested…

Walesandwest are crooks there is no doubt but what is gov uk doing about this welsh labour millions of grant money scam the cheek not for profit story is lies Anne Hinchey is rolling in cash when is she going to be investigated jackothenorth is doing good work but investigation of the cash flo bank accounts and persons involved in walesandwest scams ken skates is part of the phoney grant claims were does all the cash go guernsey bank accounts it seems offshore secret cash hoards ask walesandwest a question and they go silent publish scam details of the dodgy deals and Anne Hinchey chief exec goes silent welsh assembly is part of the scam Carwyn Jones in getting money in brown envelopes from walesandwest there now getting what is coming to the crooks exposure and police arrests for corruption in Cardiff and beyond not fo profit lies that’s amazing with 61million in grants paid to them who is handling the cash what off shore bank account we’re are the accounts do they show we’re cash goes too doubt it it’s totaly welsh labour cash grab let’s sort out these welsh crooks now

It is plain that we are witnessing a changing of the guard: the old political dynasties are being shouldered aside by a new(ish) breed whom a social anthropologist would place at the bureaucratic, as opposed to the patriarchal, end of the spectrum. Whatever the administrative nuts and bolts, however, the nature of their interest in constantly despairing swathes of immovable property is unmistakably patrimonial. We are in the kind of historical juncture that includes the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Enclosures, and the Highland Clearances. I have no doubt that, mutatis mutandis, new dynasties are now being formed.

Jac. Excellent research on your part again. In my view, a copy of your post should be sent to Wales Audit Office as Welsh Government’s external auditors. I don’t think there is any point in involving internal audit. They appear not to be interested in investigating anything.

Tai Ceredigion previously acquired approximately 2000 dwellings from Ceredigion County Council in bulk transfer of housing stock. Included in the transfer were rows of lock-up garages. They appear to regard these as potential free building plots, along with any large garden from a former Council house that can be redeveloped into flats. As one local Councillor previously commented. There will not be a blade of grass left before long.

Seems like the Afan Valley is going to be commandeered wholesale by the corporate invaders, and free access will be severely curtailed or banned to the bits they don’t want. Knowing Jones, Skates and the other cronies they’ll probably serve up an option for the whole valley up to the Bwlch. Cnuts all of them.

I suspect the story here is that Gavin Woodhouse of Northern Powerhouse Developments is a bit of a wide boy, his business record does not stand up to close scrutiny. And I doubt if he has the necessary money or expertise.

This explains the involvement, first, of Bear Grylls, to give the project ‘profile’; then Peter Moore, ex-Center Parcs, to give it credibility; and now Dutch company Landal GreenParks to provide further expertise and probably money.

So the only Welsh involvement is of the purest colonial kind – giving up land and resources to superior beings for whom we shall provide cheap labour.

Spot on, Jac, particularly re Mr Woodhouse. A quick squint at his company portfolio shows up a lot of charges recently, so he may be in deep hock. He is also currently in an office that is providing rent-free accommodation until May 2018, at which time he is going to have to find over £37K per annum. I wonder how long it is before the bubble bursts?

Off topic again – Marine LePen copies a video nasty the issues an online warning to French people that IS/ISIL/Daesh are a horrible bunch of murdering war criminals and a judge says that she should stand trial !!!

French just as daft and gutless as rest of EU project. EU will do nothing to stop importation of extreme Islamic terror as cheap labour remains a primary objective and that is achieved by diluting labour force with imports, regardless of those imports’ ideologies, political or religious.

Despite all the howling about Brexit, UK government also remains wedded to cheap labour objectives while Remainers spout all sorts of crap about equality, fight against poverty etc but their actions tell a different story.

Apologies for these little diversions but they all fit into a bigger picture of government and major corporates using their covert powers dressed up as “policy” and “innovation” to crush the identity of small nations and enslave people into a low cost transnational labour force. Aim for us is to be fitted into an Anglo speaking recreational and low grade industrial workforce serving the needs of the supranational corporate state. Even Greater England should recognise the threat in all this but it is so wrapped up in its own supremacist vision that it won’t know the end is nigh until POTUS tells them to hand the keys to some dude from Brussels/Berlin.

My email to Dai Lloyd followed by his very prompt response being fair. Mine sent at 18:11 last night and his reply at 06:19 this morning.

Dear Mr Lloyd.

I read the jacothenorth blog regularly and he’s written may articles about housing associations in Wales and questioning the funding that they get from Welsh Labour. In the latest one titled ‘Wales and West Housing, the scandal continues’ he highlights a planned development by WaW in Aberystwyth. As part of this development he questions a bid by Ceredigion CC for a drawdown request for the acquisition of the site in question. The requested amount is £1,690,000. This is just one of so many articles by Jac in a similar vein.

Surely someone in Plaid knows about Jac’s site and is aware of his articles. Could I ask that you read this latest article ? In this and the other articles there are so many bullets that Plaid could fire at Welsh Labour. I’ve said before that Plaid are just too nice, too careful. As if they don’t want to rock the boat. Personally I want the Welsh Labour boat sunk. Please let me know what you think.

Dear John,

I agree with you.We have researchers checking the veracity of all claims before responding shortly.

Not a lot, but if you go to the Update I’ve done you’ll see that I mention the ‘Welsh’ Government Programme Delivery Plan for Pembrokeshire and among the projects listed is one for W&W at Parrog Yard, Newport. I might provide a link later.

Davis is not only off-topic, but way off target as well. The appalling Le Pen has been charged for causing pain and distress to the family of poor James Foley – as the Guardian piece accurately reports.

As for causing pain and distress I suggest that was done back at the time the scumbags of IS were committing their crimes against humanity. M LePen acted to remind the French of the atrocities these bastards are capable of as many French appear unaware or a bit removed from what has happened within their own country. With repatriation of some very suspect characters very much on the cards across the EU we too should be alert as they are in no way regretting their participation in the gory campaigns in Iraq and Syria. Too many people in government are relatively safe from these monsters and their actions whereas Joe & Jane Public are left high and dry when an “event” happens. Remember how they all went into a huddle and shit themselves when that loon killed a lightly protected officer on duty outside Parliament.

In the meantime the Guardian gets onto its moral high horse and people in this country get to use up some of their stocks of righteous indignation, until the next act of violence gets committed. .

So the Welsh protection forces are at work and keeping an eye on things.

If you are suspicious or have an extreme fear of unfamilar people in Ceredigion, contact WECTU immediately – It’s your civic duty.

OFF TOPIC THREAD

My heart goes out to James Foley’s parents. What got my attention in the interview was that Mr Foley said: “How cruel this method of execution is as oppose to the many others.” He didn’t mention the perpetrators once – just an observation.

Last year, Neil McEvoy was suspended from the Plaid Cymru group in the Senedd. The issue in question was that he ‘spoke against party policy’ over the issue of hard working natives being able to buy equity in council houses. It was a Labour Party proposal, and Plaid Cymru has a ‘whip’ of AMs to vote with Labour.

Most ‘social housing’ in Wales is not actually provided by councils, it’s mainly provided by housing associations, and the Welsh government pump millions of pounds into these ‘housing associations’. Unlike council housing, where there is a ‘local connection’ criteria to be eligible, the housing associations can set their own eligibility criteria. This is where we see ‘imports’ of difficult families and offenders into Wales.

While Plaid Cymru ‘attack their own’, the Labour administration (along with the LibDem AM who proposed it) has now introduced a ‘Rent-to-Buy’ scheme for social housing in Wales, to be run buy housing associations. First off the blocks to offer this is Wales &West.

Their eligibility criteria is (a) Be aged 18 or over, (b) Be a UK citizen or have indefinite leave to remain in the UK, (c) Have access to enough savings to cover the costs of the scheme. (d) Have sufficient income to raise a mortgage on the property in the future (i.e. 3.5 x annual income), (e) Have no County Court Judgements (CCJ’s) against you. Preference will be given to “those in the same position as first time buyers such as owner occupiers who are going through a relationship breakdown or those who are currently living in an area of regeneration which means they have to move.

This means that if you’re a wife basher from Birmingham you qualify (bit of deposit from the divorce) to buy a publicly funded social housing in Wales, however, if you’re a struggling Welsh family, with kids you can’t. All funded by the Welsh budget.

There was, of course a delay to this scheme as the minister responsible had second thoughts. That was Carl Sergeant; he had grave concerns about it. Now he’s ‘out of the way’, the scheme has been signed off, and snapped up by W&W. Perhaps it’s time for Lee Waters not only to disclose that he was informed by Deryn by email that Carl had been sacked, prior to Carl being informed, but also that Bethan Jenkins was on the Deryn email leak list. Bethan, if course, led the charge for the suspension of Neil McEvoy over his ‘right-to-buy’ speech.

Seeing as Welsh public funding is involved it would be reasonable to think that Welsh residency might be a qualification, but no, it’s open to anybody. Though that said, Rent to Buy operates in England as well.

What we might see is that Rent to Buy operating in attractive rural and coastal areas of Wales will attract those who can’t afford to buy outright in Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion. But of course, for locals, these are still low wage areas, so few locals will be eligible for the scheme.

I’d like to know more about this Rent to Buy. For example do you have to live in the property, or can it be sub-let? Is there an upper age limit for joining the scheme?

Priority is given to “those who are currently living in an area of regeneration which means they have to move.”. This is the ‘Temple Quarter” of Bristol. They will be shipped out to Wales and given low cost housing built and financed by the Welsh Government.

Those rules, as quoted, suggest that a prospective buyer doesn’t have to be in residence as a tenant before being allowed to become a buyer. At least the old style Right to buy was set up to enable existing tenants to buy their current home – a good thing especially had it freed up funds to build new houses, which is where the whole thing fell down because authorities pissed the funds away on other “initiatives” and governments of the day didn’t care a toss about the probable consequences 10-20-30 years later.

Local authorities were legally prevented from using the receipts from Right to Buy for building replacement homes, and I believe only got a third of the receipts anyway – the rest went to central government.

Exactly. There was nothing wrong in principle with Right to Buy, yet Plaid Cymru seem to be attacking the very idea of ordinary people buying their own home.

If Plaid Cymru was so concerned about the lack of social housing it would target the allocation policies that see those from outside of Wales – criminals, drug addicts, problem families, etc – get housed ahead of locals. To do that Plaid would need to confront the organisations responsible – the probation companies, the third sector, private landlords, many housing associations.

Far easier to appear principled, and pander to the English left, by attacking what it chooses to interpret as ‘Thatcher’s Legacy’.

It’s a common misconception amongst the British Left. I think it comes down to them considering houses as ‘property’ when quite simply a house is in no way analagous to the huge estates of the landed gentry. Interestingly the communist parties in most of what was the Eastern Bloc considered houses as personal property, like clothing, and so avoided such silly notions. I don’t know what the level of home ownership was in those countries, but I do know that it was significant, and that there was no real state opposition to it. There were, of course, those huge developments of modernist estates,in an attempt to solve their housing crises, but that as a housing solution was by no means restricted to the Eastern Bloc, and at least theirs are still standing, and often still regarded as desirable places to live, which is more than can be said for much of the high rise in the UK!

I cannot for the life of me understand why the Brit Left should be so opposed to the idea of ordinary people owning their own homes, which is what this opposition is, fundamentally. For me, home ownership is an ideal, and having said that, not for everyone. Really, people should have the choice. If people rent, (from social landlords, or councils, or even better, democratically run not for profit trusts) they are still paying for their housing costs, and as far as I am concerned, they should acquire the right to buy their home so long as the proceeds are further invested in the provision of more housing for local needs.

There you go, my memory chip is on the blink or elects to wipe out bad memories ! Central government therefore owes Wales 2/3 of the receipts from sales within Welsh authorities since the plan was first introduced plus a commercial rate of interest for the years it had use of that money.

Excellent exposure article. There are some fundamental democratic issues at stake here, and some questions:
Has the submitted social housing grant bid for Ceredigion been approved by the Council leader?
Or by the cabinet portfolio holder ?
Or by an unelected executive officer / civil servant?
How can a bid for over £1m be submitted to fund a scheme which has not yet been in front of the Council planning committee? Have paid officers already given it the quiet nod ?
Going back a stage to outline stage why did the town council not oppose this replacement carbuncle which is even bigger than the original carbuncle? Where are the public minutes of the relevant town council meeting on their website?
Why isn’t a local architect practice being used?
Where is the local housing needs survey evidence and older persons strategy which justifies the building of such a huge extra care scheme in Aberystwyth? And how does the proposed scheme replace the residential care (not extra care) places lost from the closure of the Council’s Bodlondeb residential home.? How does it help avoid the placement of Aberystwyth dementia sufferers out of county?
Where is the social services Director’s view in all of this?
There appears to be a lack of transparency and a strategic long term vision here – for example, how does this new scheme fit into the Councils residential homes plans and the existing Methodist Homes home on the other side of the town?
Where is the democratic debate on all of this? Are the elected councillors like Ceredig silent for a very good reason? Where is the scrutiny of this public funded scheme? Is it really all left to officers like Keith Davies?
It really needs someone to go into planning to inspect the ever growing planning file – before it gets “slimmed down” . It needs some probing FOI questions about the housing need analysis; the previous failed attempts by Tai Cantref to get social housing grant on this scheme and what has suddenly changed the Councils and Welsh Governments mind on this site since it was transferred to Cardiff based Wales and West.
So many important questions for our elected members to ask but they all appear silent.

My interpretation is that Wales and West, due to its Labour Party connections, can get what it wants in Labour-controlled areas (it’s no coincidence that it has an expensive new office block in Flintshire (rather than in Denbighshire or Gwynedd), and when it ventures outside Labour fiefdoms it relies on civil servants in Cardiff ‘influencing’ local council officials. As so many senior council officers in Wales are English, and too many of them anti-Welsh, this ‘leaning’ is easily achieved.

In the case of Ceredigion’s politicians, at county level and Aberystwyth town level, I think Bodlondeb, and the campaign whipped up by Momentum – with Owen Jones turning up – unnerved them to the point where they were prepared to give Wales and West whatever it asked for as long as the new Plas Morolwg could be sold as a replacement for Bodlondeb.

You mention dementia sufferers, but Wales and West isn’t interested in hard work like this, it prefers easy money. So the new Plas Morolwg will not provide the dementia centre the area needs. Which means that either Ceredigion’s dementia sufferers will be placed far away of else more money will need to be spent in the near future building a dementia unit in Aberystwyth.

Both options could be avoided if Plas Morolwg did what I suspect many locals think it will doing in providing such a service.

In fact, the more I look at what Wales and West has planned for Plas Morolwg the more I see just another money-making scheme for which there is unlikely to be a need in Aberystwyth; so many of the tenants will be shipped in from over the border to a facility built with Welsh public funding. A residential facility built for no better reason than to expand the Wales and West empire.

Lot of hot air here. Can we have detailed facts about who are wales and west? Who’s running it etc and what their –
Individuals named – history and track record and affiliations with building trades etc.

Jac, apologies for this not being on topic, but I thought you might be interested in this info regarding Lammas, which I have just found, if you haven’t already seen it? As Lammas is being promoted widely as the perfect template of an eco village, which the likes of Jane Davidson, David Thorpe (who also has a vested interested in flogging his book to everyone who wants a “one planet life”), Tao Paul Wimbush and all at “One Planet” would like replicated/ foisted upon us, all over Wales, there has been a noticeable and consistent push to underplay any negative press, including discussion of the recent fire. However, the idyllic eco village “success story” they like to promote has been hiding a very unpleasant political situation within the Lammas community itself over the last couple of years, so unpleasant, as being more akin to the Borgias or the Medici, than a happy, caring, environmentally aware community.

“Either a) burn down the village like a child would,
b) grow the fuck up and learn how to
participate in a genuine conversation, or c) shut t
he hell up and live the ‘peaceful life’ that you
say you want and is available to you now. Please.
There is only so far I can walk from your
wailing and still be at home.”

In light of the recent fire, lets hope he didn’t choose a)!! also, considering the bad feeling and hostility that has been breeding under the Public Relations radar at Lammas, it would be very suspicious if Simon and Jasmine Dale get another OPD in a location away from Lammas, to build yet another Eco house (their carbon foot print must be through the roof!), especially if it’s in a more scenic location!
Perhaps Lammas should rename their village Salem!

Well it didn’t take them long to descend into a totally hypocritical, avaricious and self serving agenda. As always, very little is mentioned about their impact on the wider Welsh community or their commitment to learning Welsh, in fact, they are constantly fund raising, not for the local Welsh Medium school, where they say they will send their children in their plans, but for the local Steiner school, where no doubt the majority will be sending their children. This is a problem which is set to continue, already One Planet has over 1000 members and growing looking to start up an OPD in Wales, how many people intending to apply for an OPD will actually be from Wales?

The whole saga reads like a bad soap opera, petty grievances that have grown and festered into amongst many other things, accusations of verbal and physical abuse ie the alleged person tried to throttle one of the other villagers, to the involvement of Solicitors and building a case for Court, against each other. The main person accused of misdemeanours, by what seems like many members of the “community” is Kit Owen. Interestingly, Kit Owen was one of the original campaigners for the OPDs along with Tao Paul Wimbush and both were friends and lived in Swansea before moving to Pembrokeshire. It appears from statements, that resentment grew over the role “Tao ” Wimbush and Hoppi Wimbush have appeared to make for themselves at Lammas as self appointed Guru/Earth goddess and of the money being made through their courses. The use of the “Welsh” Government funded Community hub and of other communal areas, that became an issue of resentment over the courses being taught there and who was being given access and the issue of the allocation of money etc etc. The main issue however, is that of ownership and wealth generation from the OPD smallholdings.

Originally the Lammas project was supposed to incorporate 9 smallholdings, but as can be seen elsewhere with the “One Planet” project, there is a push to encourage as many people as possible to move to this lifestyle, (Is the “Welsh” Government actively encouraging this?)here is David Thorpe promoting the “cause” down in Sussex, no doubt trying to encourage as many English, middle class “hippies” like himself to move to Wales, so he can truly feel at home! http://www.emerson.org.uk/events-at-emerson/item/weekend-workshop?category_id=8
A few more plots were sold at Glandwr, promoted by Tao Wimbush and the people from these plots use the communal facilities which brought further grievances in 2016. The community appears to be run with a huge amount of bureaucracy, meetings and minutes and legislation all viewable to the public, ironic when you think that many of the people involved have tried to opt out of society for these reasons.

I’m sure there is much I have missed out on, but from what I have read so far, the project appears a hypocritical deceit, which can clearly be seen by the agendas of many of the people involved, that they are more concerned about their own wealth generation, having their own smallholding on their own terms in competition with others and bending the planning law, than the environmental issues they argue that the OPDs are about. They are also concerned about promoting a squeaky clean image of the One Planet project to the public, which in reality is nothing like the unpleasant politics that has been ongoing and acted out behind the scenes, over the short time TAN 6 has been enforced.

Welcome to the real world! Did this bunch of weirdos really think that forming a commune in wildest Pembrokeshire and ignoring officialdom that applies to the rest of us would insulate them from the everyday issues every one of us encounters in our neighbours? Except of course – such isolation and exclusivity brings its own problems because in a close knit, small community like that you just can’t escape it when you do get problems. Ooh, that Kit is a boy, isn’t he? I can see they’ll be rushing to finish that new Temple, complete with sacrificial altar. And guess who’s first up to appease the Spirits? Great link, Myfanwy – thoroughly enjoyed.

Thing about OPDs is that they are a complete fraud. If you read the ‘sustainability’ document that they require to submit in the planning process, stuff like vegetable yield, for each plot cultivated, it’s about the same as a suburban allotment. Which suggests they could achieve the same goals of ‘saving the planet’ by just buying an existing property, like the ones they previously lived in located in Brighton, Bristol and West London, and then rent an allotment to do the ‘grow your own’. The reality is that their settlement is just new build rural housing development, a scam to get onto the lowest council tax band, and a method of land acquisition through capital gains tax exemption of a CIC.

The scam was exposed at Lammas when one of the ‘eco-homes’ burnt down last year due to exemption from fire and building regulations, and the owner estimated the ‘re-build cost and many hundreds of thousands of pounds, yet claimed on ‘Grand Designs’ that it cost just a few grand tops. It’s a scam, we know it, they know it, and the Welsh Government are willing to allow it to happen for a bit of political greenwash with a sob to a few middle class fleece jacketed Labour AMs who deep down detest the working class preferring to weekend waltz with the wimbury bushes.

Labour AMs need to fix the gross inequalities that exist in society, before thinking up policies that pander to an already privileged group of people. The reason why Countries in Scandinavia are seen as role models in terms of successful societies, is because they fixed the gap between rich and poor and most people appear middle class, you just don’t see the levels of poverty and inequality that exist in Britain. All these countries experienced dreadful poverty in history and there was widespread migration to America, but they turned it around. (Finland experienced an appalling famine before it’s independence).

“The local County Councillor who stood up and said that the soil here is poor and that we can’t grow veg here, and who responded to an email from me with pictures of me bringing in the onion harvest by suggesting that I’d bought them and faked the photo, will never be my friend or a respected neighbour. I wouldn’t piss on these people if they were on fire. I’ll leave others to do the forgiving.”

So that’s Paul Jennings’ view of one of Carmarthenshire’s councillors then, is it? “Onion harvest”, hmmm.

“It’s an old struggle, the struggle for access to the land and to livings which we might make for ourselves, but whilst it is old, it is not a marginal concern. In OPD, for all its faults, there lies the seed of transformation of the countryside, of resettlement of the land, of affordable housing for all, and of good local food in every community. Of course the wealthy and the landed don’t want it to succeed, don’t want the policy to be widened and diversified, and only thousands or tens of thousands of people taking to the land will ensure that the cause advances, that we have the chance to take back the green deserts and repopulate the open spaces”

“Blacking up for a carnival” is certainly not the done thing to do in the year 2018. However, Ceredigion’s good folk probably did this for a good cause for their Carnival without thinking politically correctly. My guess is that these people were local in a time warp, and possibly Welsh speaking, and not of any evil intentions, but they were WRONG and will now know about it. That’s my guess number one.
Now we come to my guess number two – I guess that the people who reported them, were the newly active Momentum Group of Corbynites who are getting louder every day in Ceredigion and confidently taking over right under the noses of the locals. These sort of people are obsessed with being politically correct and would not lower themselves to join a community led local fund raising carnival blacked up or not. Corbynites do not understand the word “cymuned”!
Readers of “Jac” please tell me which of my guesses in correct.

Here’s a report from the Guardian at the time of the incident, and who is quoted as being “horrified” – why it’s “Dinah Mulholland, the Labour candidate for Ceredigion in the June general election . . . “! Fancy that!

I was hoping that the blacking up business in west Wales would get a mention here.

Isn’t it time that The Guardian mentioned that Will Straw, Jack Straw’s son, is a member of a dance troupe that blacks up? The dance troupe is called the Coconuts – the charming Will and co abbreviate it to ‘The Nutters’.

Will Straw also picked up a CBE for organising a political campaign which failed – the In campaign for the EU referendum.

Will was an advisor to Gordon Brown, writes the blog Left Foot Forward, was involved with the IPPR and is looking for a safe Labour seat.

Will’s dad Jack was the man named by Craig Murray, the former Ambassador for Uzbekistan, as being the person who ordered Craig to be withdrawn from his posting and returned to a psychiatric hospital in London after Craig raised issues of human rights – namely the Uzbekistan regime boiling political opponents alive. The Top Doctors could find no evidence of insanity on Craig’s part. Blair wanted diplomatic links with Uzbekistan because of the gas reserves on their land.

Jack was a member of Islington Council whilst a paedophile gang ran riot in the Islington children’s homes and the Councillors ignored warnings about this.

In terms of accusations of racism against the Welsh by the English (!) – wasn’t there a total misunderstanding about the Black Boy pub in Caernarfon a few years ago? An English tourist hit the roof and demanded that the pub’s name be changed. If he’d known his arse from his elbow, he’d know that the pub name began as a tribute to the Black Boy in question – he was a black man who did well for himself in Caernarfon centuries ago and was well respected. I think he was also the first black person to make a life for themselves in either Wales or north Wales – a freed slave or something similar, someone who had a really bad time and found success in Wales? I’m sure that readers of this blog could fill the Guardian readers in on the story of the Black Boy…

nah drsally, we would prefer to just “fill the Guardian readers in” and skip the story telling !! Reading the persistent whining in their journos output and readers comments is interesting and illuminating. Their “superior” attitude turns up even on sports columns. Proves that AngloBrit supremacists are not only found among Tories and UKIP ranks.

I’m surprised no one accused me of being behind the ‘blacking up’ saga, as it took place at the Aberaeron carnival last year!

A load of hot air and PC bollocks! This is the exact kind of shit that we need to fight against in Ein Gwlad. I happen to know some of the lads who took part on the float (supported incidentally by the very people they represented – the actual Jamaican Bobsleigh team – who saw no harm in it and made a statement to that effect), but of course the liberal progressives know better don’t they? Shit-pots the lot of them, endorsed by people like Plaid. This not what we are about.

The lads involved were totally bewildered about what the problem was, because they never set out to wilfully exercise any form of racism, the exact opposite in fact, all they were innocently concerned with was raising a bit of cash for charity. If there is any racism at work here, they are the victims of people popping over the border to tell them what they should think and how to behave, whist probably trotting off to the pub afterwards for a laugh when someone probably said “that’ll teach those yokel sheep shaggers”.

Bony himself was OK with it, but one professional protester wouldn’t accept that, “Matthew Collins at Hope Not Hate wondered if Williams thinks this is some kind of homage to Bony. It is incredibly poor taste . . . Whether Wilfried Bony is OK with it or not, I do not think the vast majority of black Britons would find this amusing,” Mr Collins said.”

In other words, ‘It doesn’t matter what the ‘victim’ thinks, we superior beings will decide what is offensive’. What arrogant, patronising nonsense. But that’s the professional left for you.

The wider message seems to be that white people should not show their admiration for black people – which is what Williams and the Aberaeron boys were doing – or else they do it with white faces!

Before long there’ll be no fancy dress or carnivals. If ‘ealth and safety don’t kill it off, what with we can’t have the Carnival Queen riding in the back of an open truck, no seatbelt see, and we can’t have kids mixing with adults because they haven’t had a CRB check, then the politically correct will do for it. When I was a young man there were always certain members of my rugby team (not me, I hasten to add) liked to put on dresses, make up and generally behave like outrageous sluts. Leanne, Deryn – are you listening? That’s bloody outrageous and I hope such debauchery and insult to wimminhood has long been consigned to the past.

It’s still OK and has their full backing if you’re “transitioning” of course. FFS!

nearly every news bulletin broadcast by the main channels now contrives to feature “chicks with dicks”. It’s a cheap way of filling up news programmes without having to go looking for the real bad stuff that needs reporting and serious in depth raking over. They tend to feature an ugly brute with a massive adam’s apple, dressed in a frock, hands like a bloody navvy, who starts chirping on about how difficult it is ! Well it’s difficult for us having to put up with this unecessary intrusion too.

Paul Jennings again, who considers himself a “Dreamer of Anarchist dreams” on his Facebook page;https://www.facebook.com/paul.jennings.714, but far from being an anarchist, he is instead helping to fulfil the colonial ambitions of the British establishment in Wales. Jennings and his family apparently rushed back from living the English hippy, expat colonialist dream in the Pyrenees, when they heard about the OPDs in Wales. It is the contempt he shows for his Welsh neighbours, which is of course shared by many other English people who move to Wales and can be seen in the article mentioned by mrorigami and in the the comments section here, https://www.lowimpact.org/one-planet-development-arrested-my-attempts-to-build-a-home-on-a-smallholding-in-wales/, which mark him and others out as the arrogant colonialists they actually are.

The joke about the OPD planning is that it’s all about saying the required things in the planning application, they know how to manipulate the system by saying they will support the Welsh language, send their children to Welsh Medium schools etc, but for many like Paul Jennings and his wife Sarah Grounds, they have no intention of sending their children to the Local Welsh Medium school, but will either send them to a private school (because most are privileged) or home school, as Paul Jennings mentions here, “Today is Home Ed day 🙂 None of our kids have been to school. Our older 2 are in college and Uni now but Alfred is still a Wild Child <3 I run a Home Education group with the lovely Claire, every Wednesday. Alfred and I walk 3 miles into town which I love (if it’s not raining). We get to spend real time together. Talking, laughing and walking in the countryside <3 #educationcanbedifferent” https://www.facebook.com/Criafolen/. So this is hardly supporting the local Welsh community or language is it?

Another aspect, that was in fact brought up by Kit Owen and the Lammas dispute, is the issue of those with OPDs, bending the planning regulations to suit their own agenda. Each individual OPD should comprise of only one dwelling, but already many of the people with OPDs such as the Dales have built a multiple dwellings on site. Others have built eco pods and other structures for renting out, this is against the terms and conditions, but still these people arrogantly push ahead, one rule for them another for the locals, as can be seen in Jennings site https://www.facebook.com/Criafolen/ and at Lammas etc. It looks like the “Welsh” Government are determined to undermine Welsh communities and Cymraeg by supporting projects to encourage English people to move to Wales, revealing a completely, colonialist agenda.

At one point Jennings says, “OPD is a Welsh Government policy which has been abandoned, orphaned. Virtually no-one in Wales knows anything about it. That in itself is a huge failure.” But of course he knows about OPD, and lots of others like him know about it.

He doesn’t seem to understand, or maybe he just doesn’t care, that legislation like OPD is unknown to Welsh people because it was never intended to benefit Welsh people. It was dreamed up by academics and others with influence to push their crazy ideas onto a ‘Welsh’ Government grateful for anybody’s ideas.

And supported at a higher level because it’s a useful component in a wider colonisation strategy. Which makes Jennings and all the others just pawns in someone else’s game.

Sadly some anarchists just don’t get it at all. I’m pretty much in the anarchist camp, but am constantly finding myself trying to explain to other anarchists, (particularly those of English origin in Wales, oddly anarchists who live in England are generally much more understanding and respectful) that they are the interlopers, and it is they who should be integrating, and not the other way around.

They seem to have sense of entitlement that cannot be shifted. They have no concept of respect, or that the majority of Welsh speakers are actually working class, and marginalised largely because they perhaps don’t speak English that well. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were marginalised for this factor if they moved to England, but they are marginalised in their own home territory. I always suggest that the first task of any anarchist who moves to Wales worthy of the name is to learn the local language to fluency otherwise they are just part of the problem.

Those people taking advantage of OPD, (in essence not a bad idea, and one that should be developed with a bias towards those who can fulfill a local residency qualification, as well as a basic linguistic test in areas where more than 40% of the locals are Welsh speaking. I don’t mean full blown literacy here, merely competent conversational skills) seem to not get that their very presence is a threat to the local environment. They don’t seem to understand that their presence is as detrimental to our culture and language as it would be in any other colonial environment.

I read through the piece on lowimpact.org and was unsurprised, but at the same time horrified that no-one commenting on the pro side seemed to understand what was so completely wrong with their attitudes. Maybe they do have good intentions, but if so they need to understand that they are completely away with the fairies, and as it stands, OPD is just another piece of legislation that smooths the path of those wanting lebensraum in the west. If they had any conscience at all, they would not move here, as that would offend, as it should, their anti-colonial senses – but no, this is Wales, and the Welsh are as entitled, in their view, to about as much notice as was given to the Indians of North America. If they were indeed concerned about integrating, they would have ensured near fluency in Welsh before even moving to an area where most speak Welsh. It’s quite possible to learn Welsh in England, if you’re determined enough.

I agree with you, I am not against affordable, eco housing/smallholdings, but as you suggest it should fulfil a local residency requirement and having a language test is a very good idea, most people who move to another country to live and work, should have to fulfil this requirement. However as it stands, I do have a problem with how the policy yet again benefits a certain section of English society, which can only lead to the increasing marginalisation of Welsh people from poorer backgrounds. I can’t fathom how those who have made the policy and promoted it, fail to see this negative effect, as it is so blindingly obvious.

As for the likes of Paul Jennings who have moved to Wales, if they were real anarchists and truly believed in the “One Planet” sustainable, environmental cause, they would be championing it’s development in England, as this would really bring about the changes that they proclaim they want. Some may do the right thing and send their children to the local Welsh school and that would be supporting the Welsh community and that’s as it should be. However, it is those with the thick skins who will move, won’t bother learning Welsh and who will form their own isolated expat communities.

Then again, when you realise who dreamed up the policy and those who have been implementing it, it’s not difficult to understand that it is an English colonialist’s dream from the outset. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx6M9WLDE6o It was interesting to note that Cindy Harris, head of the Design commission for Wales, who has a lot of clout in promoting the One Planet agenda, has a similar colonial heritage to Jane Davidson, Minister for the environment and sustainability at the time of the video above. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/pioneer-sustainable-building-who-now-2057083 Cindy Harris’s father was an industrial chemist who managed a chemical plant in Shanghai, Jane Davidson and her parents lived the expat life in Zimbabwe etc, so they are both accustomed to moving to other countries and living the imperial, colonial life. Interestingly, both were at Birmingham University before moving to Wales and Cindy Harris ended up working for CAT in 1986. It appears that a lot of nepotism has been at play, how did someone with no Architecture, Design or Arts degree or doctorate end up working as the head of the Design Commission for Wales? Instead it was someone from CAT, who built straw bailed housing etc, I can’t imagine that happening in Countries such as Denmark or Sweden or Italy, proud of and famed for their good design. Is there really no Welsh talent out there to fill these important jobs, which reflect what our Nation is about? Instead Wales has the English middle class, Country living magazine “One Planet” good life, Grand design dream.

Off topic, picking up on another mouthy AngloBrit supremacist nut, Martin Glenn at English F.A, moaning about Pep wearing a yellow ribbon. That he is able to make common cause with Spain is hugely ironic when it’s quite commonplace for these blinkered jingoists to rant and rave about “fuckin’ dagoes” when the hallowed rock of Gibraltar is mentioned by Spanish diplomats. Also having dug in and defended the right to wear the poppy at football matches the silly twat goes off and denounces another man’s symbolic gesture. It could only happen in England, well not quite !

Yes I like most visitors, I have been to The Black Boy pub in Caernarfon, and found it very amenable and welcoming and very Welsh. It even had beer mats explaining briefly the story of the “Black Boy”, which was rather similar in its beginnings to the other true story of “Willis” the escaped slave who came to Swansea and had a great Welsh welcome, but sadly Willis never rose to such a comfortable life as Caernarfon’s Welsh “Black Boy”. There is another “Black Boy” pub in Killay Swansea, which for years had a picture of a young African boy on it until someone corrected the history (not by political correctness) in that Killay was once a coal mining village and young colliers black with coal used to drink there after a shift of hewing coal. Maybe the new Momentum creeps of Ceredigion will interfere in this issue. One thing is sure, none of them have ever cut an ounce of coal as did people like Aneurin Bevan. These Corbynites are all middle class new arrival social frauds!

The people of Wales need to organise themselves at national level into an “Intentional Community” with a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. It’s first objective is to set up a No Impact.org to stop the burgeoning English Lebensraum movement of low impact/hippie/ eco villager settlers who now see Wales as nothing more than a green desert with only few, indigenous backward natives to ignore.

No Impact.org is proposing a complete aerial reconnaissance of Wales to assess the situation!

Below: A cinematographer’s impression of the first complete aerial reconnaissance of Wales in search of lost
English middle class tribes secret eco villages……

After complaints that Carwyn Jones hasn’t been “keeping his eye on the ball.” The Welsh Labour Government has realeased a self build instructional video to the natives of West Wales who are complaining about lack of social housing for the local community due to the influx of tenants from the Bromford No Borders Housing Association.

The video was sponsored by No Borders Negligible Impact.org, a charity based in Shoreditch London.

The Prif Seneddwr didn’t have a comment to make but made it clear to his secretary that he was not to be disturbed again while he was having his afternoon nap. He went on to tell his secretary that if the press come around again to tell them that he is on an trade mission to Quebec or in an important meeting.

I see that Ms Kingsley-Acton (former Green activist from Watford) has resurfaced. In a previous incarnation she made a speculative application for £1million from EU funds. Now she’s jumping on the ‘training funds’ bandwagon.

It should be made known to the good people of Cydweli that the Olive Trust is not registered at companies house, and was removed from the register of charities many years ago, having folded in Gloucestershire. Ms Kingsley-Acton teamed up with a former Labour councillor from Swansea to milk the system. Beware!!

I wrote about her on my old blog. I believe she complained to Google and might have been responsible for my blog being taken down. She is, as you remind us, just another of those shysters who’s moved to Wales to cwtch up to the Labour Party and milk the system. Beware, indeed.

Her activities has already started to sap resources out of the community. As this article explains, she has now managed to get some funding from Hywel Dda University Health Board, even though her only skill in that department is being a ‘Rikki Healer’, which involves candles, joss sticks, crystals and other such quackery.

While she diverts this cash into her own pocket, we have Meddygfa Minafon not able to recruit a permenant GP, patients in neighbouring Pembre being told that there’s no room on the patient list to register to an NHS practice, and people having to travel to Carmarthen for an emergency appointment because there is no qualified medical staff available at Porth Tywyn or Prince Phillip hospital due to GPs closing down.

How much cash has she already snaffled out of the health board?
Why isn’t the ‘Olive Trust’ properly registered?
Why is Hywel Dda NHS handing cash to unqualified quacks?

That LlanelliOnline article says “Olive Trust was set up in 2011”. Strange then that I was able to find this document telling us the Olive Trust tried to screw one million pounds out of the Welsh European Funding Office in 2010.

Read somewhere that the re-introduction of Pine martens is predicted to arrest the decline of red squirrels as the pine marten has a predatory relationship with grey squirrels ! Prompt me to wonder whether there is a similar human predator that will save the Welsh while feasting on the English ? Just curious.

I think it’s great that Ms Kingsley-Acton (former Green activist from Watford) has come to Cydweli, to inform the natives of West Wales of the glory of Equality and Diversity (peace be upon it!) I’m sure the people of Cydweli will tell Ms Kingsley-Acton what they think about it.

In West Wales we don’t get much news on the BBC about the glories of the Equality and Diversity movement. Here are some inspirational videos that the Watford Green movement have uploaded on Youtube to spread the word.

Plaid Cymru must be deploying F Troop, its version of the UK’s 77th Brigade a not so secret “non-lethal engagement” ops group sometimes known as Twitter Troops ! Some of you older commenters may recall F Troop as a bunch of seriously incompetent U.S Cavalry soldiers in a comedy series taking the piss out of the antics of “serious” westerns. Plaid’s scribblers do a good job of taking the piss out of themselves !

So Wood identifies her politics with an impoverished but “intelligent” thirty-seven-year-old Mexican-American woman Consuelo (Connie) Ramos, a resident of Spanish Harlem, is unfairly incarcerated in a New York mental hospital due to her supposed violent criminal tendencies. She had been recently released from a previous governmentally forced detention in a mental institution after an episode of drug-related child neglect which led her also to lose custody of her daughter……

Picking up on your tweet regarding the “findings” of Joseph Rowntree, I must concur. Indeed it might have been better if the silly old bastard had stuck to making chocolates and sweets thus relieving us of the tedium of having a bunch of hot air merchants yapping on about the same old issues and being totally unable to identify cause and effect. Somone described it as “siop siarad” – very appropriate except someone is pouring loads of cash to give these muppets a decent salary and rewards. Having that arch-cachwr Slimy Skates contributing with his usual soppy line in platitudes just about had me reaching for a Smarties overdose!

While on this theme, Cymdeithas had a bit of form for turning militants into greedy selfish bastards. There was another mouthy little cnut way back in early 70’s who thought hunger striking and getting banged up by the old bill was just the ticket, revolutionary pacifist stuff, then pops up about 20 years later in a shiny suit spouting business school crap and running various things for WDA then WAG. I have nothing against the pacifist stance, as long as it’s held sincerely, guys like Ffred Ffransis who will probably die defending that way of doing things but these creeps who indulge their fantasy in the age range 16-25 before going off to be some “Executive nobhead” need a bloody good hiding.

The current Cymdeithas team seem to be quite clean, as yet. No doubt some of them will spend too much time in TV studios or down the Bay and will later opt for the cushy life spouting waffle and bollocks for tidy salaries and fees.

Re Myfanwy’s comments on Lammas, OPD and Jane Davidson: I’d be interested to know how Davidson became so influential in Wales because she didn’t seem to actually achieve very much and as one of your respondents above mentioned, she came from Birmingham. There isn’t much info available about her pre being elected as an AM – she has a background in education, so I am wondering if she was yet another of those caring sharing wimmin in the Senedd who like Jane Hutt and Julie Morgan wielded power because of what she knew about those involved in the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. After the cover-up to end all the other cover-ups which was the Waterhouse Inquiry, everyone who knew where the bodies were buried (literally – witnesses to the north Wales abuse were found dead over a period of years) did very well for themselves.

When Davidson vacated the Assembly she was given her own eco and sustainability empire at Trinity St Davids University. But then Trinity St Davids has hosted some odd things and odd people in recent years. The most obnoxious dysfunctional members of the theology dept from Bangor University ‘relocated’ there a few years ago and subsequently caused most of the resident Trinity St Davids theologians to resign. Then the dreadful Meri Huws aka The Crack of Doom was given a senior position at Trinity St Davids after making a terrible mess of the job that she had at Bangor University as well as becoming embroiled in scandal after she was given a senior role on the Welsh Language Board by, it was alleged, shagging a few of the right people – she was there at about the same time that Rhodri Williams was. I was told that it was actually another Rhodri in Welsh politics – who was rather more powerful and well-known than Rhodri Williams – who had once been a bedfellow of Meri’s (along with others), which is why Meri was parachuted into so many senior jobs that she could not do. And of course Meri was a social worker on Maesgeirchan in Bangor back in the 1980s when the kids from the Ty’r Felin Children’s Home on Maesgeirchan were being sexually abused and trafficked to Dolphin Square to be used by the ageing paedophiles of Westminster and Whitehall…

One of the senior posts that Meri landed in which she caused havoc was PVC for Cultural Affairs and the Welsh Language no less at Bangor University. Meri having the remit for cultural affairs was hilarious – she is as thick as a brick, got absolutely rat arsed at University functions and the drunker she became the more offensive she became. One of my mates quipped that she was Wales’s answer to Sir Les Patterson, the cultural attache. Meri’s idea of a cultural event was an art exhibition at Llangefni hosted by Rolf Harris – there was Meri on camera with Rolf, just months before Rolf was banged up for molesting children…

As Samantha Fox would have said in 1984 ‘ere, what is it with Meri and child molesters?’

The VC at Bangor at the time came under much flak for appointing the lunatic Meri to a job that she very obviously couldn’t do. I was told that he had been ordered by the Welsh Gov’t to appoint her to a senior role because Bangor didn’t have any senior wimmin managers. Meri knew that the order had gone out to the University from her old mate Rhodri and then threatened the only other woman in the University who stated her intention to apply for the post…So once more, every other woman was kicked in the chops by an ill thought out ‘equality initiative’ which simply served to advance the career of a total fuckwit who treated other wimmin dreadfully.

Meri was not the only fuckwit who bagged a job as a PVC – one of her colleagues was a total shitbag called John Farrar. Farrar was a plant biologist and like Meri had achieved high office by stuffing other people over. I wondered for ages why Farrar hadn’t been had up for bullying because he really was dreadful – then I found that he was placing the student feedback forms in front of PhD students and watching whilst they filled them in saying ‘sign there to say that you’ve never had a problem with your PhD supervisor’. Farrar taught me years ago when I was an undergrad and by the time we were in the third year no-one would go near him because he was unable to answer a student’s question without shouting at us. There was one student whom he didn’t shout at – a student whom he was shagging. She then landed a job as his research assistant which caused a great deal of embarrassment to the university – although I doubt that anyone said anything to him, they’d have just been on the receiving end of a tantrum. The offspring of that student and the dreadful Farrar is Robin Crag Farrar – currently a leading light in Cymdeithas (the Chairman or CEO or something similar).

The other seriously weird thing that happened at Trinity St Davids was their acquisition – from Oxford no less – of the Alester Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre. That Centre was Chaired by the late Lady Bronwen Astor when it was in Oxford. Bronwen was the third wife of Bill Astor of Profumo Affair fame – Bronwen was on the scene re the parties with Russian spies, Govt Ministers, teenaged call girls and, those in the know alleged, a member of the Royal Family (rumoured to be Phil the Greek). After Bill Astor died, Bronwen re-invented herself as a therapist and came over all spiritual, leading a therapy centre at Godalming in Surrey. Bronwen was originally Bronwen Pugh from Wales – she went to boarding school in Dolgellau, but I’m not sure where her home was – her dad was Welsh judge Sir Alan Pugh, who did very well out of having a daughter who married into the Astor dynasty. Sir Alan played a big part in advising the Astors re damage limitation over the Profumo Affair. The reason why Profumo is still important is that it is likely that Stephen Ward, the osteopath who was scapegoated by that bunch of hypocrites, was killed rather than having committed suicide. The appalling Baroness Trumpington, friend of Thatcher, was a member of the Cliveden Set and has the dirt on Profumo and exactly what went on. Trumpington was given a peerage by Thatcher in 1980 despite her life’s only achievements being very posh and doing a stint as the Mayoress of Cambridge. Then Thatch made Trumpers a junior Health Minister – it was Trumpers who appointed Jimmy Savile to the job as manager of Broadmoor. Not only did they all know that Savile was a sex offender but they also knew that a lot of Broadmoor patients weren’t dangerous nutters at all, they had been the victims of sexual abuse themselves – some of the north Wales victims ended up there. Well if you’re about to name a few people in high places as sexual predators, no-one’s going to listen once you’re a Broadmoor patient are they…At least two patients in Broadmoor topped themselves after being assaulted by Savile.

Regarding the Steiner school that Myfanwy mentioned – beware Steiner schools and not just because they teach the kids pseudoscience that isn’t true. The Steiner school in Porthmadog which was a magnet for alternative types back in the 80s and 90s was the focus of paedophile activity. One of my hippyish mates sent her children there and took them away when she found out what was going on. There was also a Steiner healing centre in Birmingham which grossly exploited a vulnerable woman known to me who had been offered the chance to ‘train in Steiner healing’ – they had her doing the cleaning from morn til night at bugger all rates of pay. She was a former social worker from London where she had blown the whistle on the abuse of kids in care – the inner London borough involved destroyed her. She was sacked, had a nervous breakdown, was abused again in the mental health system and ended up virtually destitute, which was how she found herself in the arms of alternative communities and then the Steiner predators…

Which brings me to Brychan’s question of why Hwel Dda NHS Trust are wasting money on quackery. Nearly all NHS Trusts do – quackery is big business in the NHS. Patients tend to embrace quackery after having had very bad experiences with conventional medicine, but the patients don’t realise that the quackery is just as ruthless. One person who has done much to ensure that quackery is available on the NHS is Prince Charles. Now I really don’t mind if Prince Charles wants to use quackery himself, there exists a thing called free choice – but a lot of very desperate people are not told that the quackery is ineffective. Professor Edzard Ernst was hounded out of Exeter University after he demonstrated that much quackery didn’t work and refused to lie about his results. The person who personally leaned on Exeter to get rid of Edzard and his team was Sir Michael Peat, Private Secretary to Prince Charles.

As for Dafis’s observation re chicks with dicks colonising the media – chicks with dicks are a very effective lobbying group and have been for quite a few years. I do not underestimate the distress that someone might experience if they have gender dysphoria – some people commit suicide as a result – but there are two things about the transgender lobbying that really worry me. First, adolescents and young adults being encouraged by some to take irreversible hormone treatment or undergo gender change surgery – if you have enough dosh you can simply purchase this in Harley Street and a lot of people bitterly regret doing so when they are older. Dafis, I take the view that it is actually far more preferable for a bloke to dress/live as a woman even if he’s obviously a bloke than to throw himself upon the mercy of the ruthless bastards that are currently building careers and making a fortune out of people who feel distressed by the expectations of their gender. The other major problem is men who are definitely men announcing themselves to be women if they are sentenced to prison, in attempts to get transferred to a women’s prison. Transgender campaigners really hate feminists making this point, but it has happened – there have been cases of male sex offenders trying to get into women’s prisons this way. I know it’s unusual and of course I don’t believe that transgender people are all sex offenders, but even one person doing this is one too many. The answer to transgender prisoners being treated so badly in prison is to improve prison conditions and effectively protect them whilst they are inside – which would benefit everyone…

The transgender field is a cause of much bad feeling in feminist circles which is probably why Wales’s leading but not very brave feminist Leanne hasn’t said a word about it – it brings serious grief. A group of older feminists were violently assaulted by ‘women’ with penises at a protest in England a few months ago. As for Leanne’s fave feminist book, I’m not sure that we should believe Leanne’s accounts of what she reads – she popped up on Any Questions dropping Raymond Williams’s name but obviously wasn’t that familiar with his work, ‘ooh there was a man called Raymond Williams and he said…’ Not that Jonathan Dimbleby was any more informed – he called Williams a sociologist. Williams was a cultural critic. It was bloody obvious that none of them knew their arses from their elbows. By the way Leannne, I have read Raymond Williams – some of his cultural criticism and observations on 1960s culture was great but ‘Border Country’ was so fucking boring that I never managed to complete it.

Dafis – you’re dead right that Joseph Rowntree should have stuck to making sweets and chocs, but they’re having great fun influencing Gov’t policy by funding ‘research’. They do fund research, they fund a lot of it – but they will only fund certain researchers whom they trust to produce the results that they want. Professor Danny Dorling has received a fortune out of Joseph Rowntree – Dorling used to be based at Sheffield University, but after all that lovely lolly from Joseph Rowntree he’s now made it through the gates of Oxford. Some years ago I had a friend who was a professional bid writer for a Russell Group university – they have professional bid writers in the Russell Group, its how they are so good at getting the dosh, not only do they write the bids but they spend a lot of time hobnobbing with influential figures on the grant awarding committees of things like Joseph Rowntree. I told this friend that I was going to put in a bid for Joseph Rowntree funding – she actually told me that they only fund certain favoured researchers, so if I wanted dosh from them I had to begin a five year plan of getting to know and ingratiating myself to the right people in their organisation before I should even bother to apply for dosh…